ISRAEL

There is an ongoing cyberattack on Russia’s Central Election Commission, targeting its information center, according to the body’s secretary. The commission’s website earlier came under a DDoS attack from 15 countries.

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley is making good on her threat to cut US aid to countries that vote against the US in the United Nations.

In December, 128 countries voted in the United Nations General Assembly against the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. At the time, President Trump and Haley threatened that there would be grave repercussions for recipients of US aid who failed to stand by their benefactor on such issues.

On Thursday, Foreign Policy reported on a 53-page memo issued by Haley. Titled “America First Foreign Assistance Policy”, the new policy will make good on that threat.

“It is the opinion of the U.S. mission to the U.N. that all U.S. foreign assistance should be reevaluated to ensure that taxpayers dollars are spent to advance U.S. interests, not to fund foreign legacy programs that provide little or no return on investment,” the memo read.

National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, a favorite of the D.C. foreign policy establishment and one of the White House’s few top advisers left who could potentially stop Donald Trump from starting a war with Iran, is apparently a dead man walking.

The Washington Post reports that while McMaster hasn’t been officially fired yet, Trump has already decided he’s gone and is looking at potential replacements:

President Trump has decided to remove H.R. McMaster as his national security adviser and is actively discussing potential replacements, according to five people with knowledge of the plans, preparing to deliver yet another jolt to the senior ranks of his administration.

Trump is now comfortable with ousting McMaster, with whom he never personally gelled, but is willing to take time executing the move because he wants to ensure both that the three-star Army general is not humiliated and that there is a strong successor lined up, these people said.?

The imminent threat posed by Tehran to the countries of the Middle East shouldn’t be taken lightly, but preoccupation with the Iranian issue has become obsessive and is inspired by sheer ignorance among Israel’s leaders and the people covering the Islamic republic in Israeli media.

Almost half of Israeli weapons exported over past 5 years to India, with other main buyers being Azerbaijan and Vietnam; in imports, Israel is 17th in the world, which increased its arms purchases by 125% over the past 5 years, buying 60% of its weapons from the US.

Roger Waters releases ‘Supremacy’ in protest of US Jerusalem move
Waters reads out poem by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish to music composed by Palestinian group Le Trio Joubran; ‘On the surface, it narrates the last speech of The Native American to The White Man, but it speaks also to Darwish’s beloved Palestine, and its indigenous people, in fact to all victims of settler colonialism everywhere, always,’ Waters says.

While I was browsing through my big collection of articles and images about the abuses of human rights and the denigrating Israeli crimes against Palestinian civilians, I noticed this image which should go all around the world as symbol of dehumanization.

The Arabic-language Palestinian al-Manar newspaper quoted an Iraqi source as saying that 250 to 300 Israeli soldiers are stationed at Taji military base, North of Baghdad, using American or Canadian passports to conceal their real identity.

Observers believe that the soldiers are indeed missioned to conduct terrorist operations and assassinate Iraqi figures>>>

(*and they're probably feeling a little cockey , with only 56 days left until Israel's most historic Independence Day since Biblical Times)

Syria’s reported use of chemical weapons is threatening to turn the civil war there into a wider conflict. But the Bashar al-Assad government may not be the only one in the region with a nerve gas stockpile. A newly discovered CIA document indicates that Israel likely built up a chemical arsenal of its own.

It is almost universally believed in intelligence circles here in Washington that Israel possesses a stockpile of several hundred fission nuclear weapons, and perhaps even some high-yield thermonuclear weapons. Analysts believe the Israeli government built the nuclear stockpile in the 1960s and 1970s as a hedge against the remote possibility that the armies of its Arab neighbors could someday overwhelm the Israeli military. But nuclear weapons are not the only weapon of mass destruction that Israel has constructed.

The Israeli-influenced sacking of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson may draw President Donald Trump even closer to withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that governs Iran’s nuclear program, analysts told Sputnik.

On Friday, after a meeting of the JCPOA commission in Vienna, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi held separate talks with US officials, local media reported. On Tuesday, Tillerson was dismissed via Twitter and replaced by CIA Director Mike Pompeo — a move Trump said was over disagreements on policy issues, including the JCPOA.

The exercise is led by the NATO Command headquartered in Lago Patria (JFC Naples), under the command of US Admiral James Foggo. Appointed by the Pentagon as his predecessors, at the same time he commands the U.S. Naval Forces Europe and U.S. Naval Forces Africa, whose headquarters are in Naples Capodichino.

Egyptian military employs electronic warfare measures against terrorists in Sinai, blocking cell reception in southern Israel; Israeli military and political officials in talks with counterparts in Cairo in effort to resolve the three-weeks-long crisis, so far unsuccessfully.

Netanyahu, who is currently being charged with multiple cases of corruption, misuse of government funds and public office, has, for years, epitomized the image of Israel internationally.

In Israel, Netanyahu has masterfully kept his rightwing Likud Party at the center of power. Even if as part of larger coalitions – as is often the case in the formation of most of Israeli governments – the Likud, under Netanyahu, has shaped Israeli politics and foreign policy for many years.

As Israel’s Jewish population continues to move to the right, the country’s political ideology has been repeatedly redefined in the last two decades.

Now, a negligible eight percent of Israeli Jews see themselves as leftwing, while a whopping 37 percent consider themselves rightwing. Although 55 percent see themselves as center, the term itself does not represent what political centers traditionally do in other countries.

Yesterday, students, campus workers, and allies from across the University of California system were in Los Angeles to call on the UC Regents to listen to student voices and divest university funds from corporations that profit from human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. Following the UC Regents’ signing of the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investments in 2014 and clear votes in support of divestment by the University of California Student Association (UCSA), UC Graduate Student Worker Union (UAW 2865), and Student Governments on eight out of nine UC campuses, students are demanding the UC Regents ensure that the UCs reflect the values we all hold dear: freedom, justice, and equality.

I am being sued for libel in the High Court in England by Campaign Against Antisemitsm’s chairman Gideon Falter. I have made the decision to fight this crucial battle for freedom of expression even though this fight poses a real risk of bankrupting me and my family.

I choose to fight their suit because I believe that the CAA and its chairman and its use of libel laws pose a danger to freedom of speech and the future of this country as an open society. Enough is enough!

Mr. Falter has sued me for comments I made on my own website.

My comments were made in the context of expressing my opinion about the situation where, last July, The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) attested that there had been no increase in anti-Semitism in Britain, and Gideon Falter and the CAA refused to accept the CPS’s verdict. Falter and the CAA insisted that anti Semitism was on the rise. Sky news reported on the discrepancies between the findings of CPS and the CAA.

The Israeli authorities are exerting pressure on Facebook to comply with more of their demands.

Earlier this month, members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, discussed how to suppress content of which they disapproved on the social media website.

One objective was to get Facebook to ban pictures of Ahmad Nasser Jarrar, a Palestinian extrajudicially executed by the Israeli army in February. Human rights groups have concluded that the military sought to kill, rather than arrest, Jarrar, a suspect in the shooting death of an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank.

Uri Maklev, an Israeli lawmaker, claimed there is a “correlation between social networks and terror operations,” and that “Facebook is responsible for what is being done on its platform” and must do “everything to remove such content.”

According to Israel’s state attorney office, the Israeli government requests an average of 12,000 cases of content to be removed from Facebook each year.

The West’s policies on Palestine can be divided into two broad categories: the mindless and the misleading.

By deciding to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, Donald Trump has behaved in a mindless manner. The most plausible explanation for why the US president did so is that acting like a pyromaniac endears him to his pro-Israel campaign bankroller Sheldon Adelson and to an extremist – mainly Christian – constituency.

Despite his propensity for telling lies, Trump has been more honest on this particular dossier than the European Union and its robotic representatives. They claim to be pursuing peace and a two-state solution, while aiding Israeli authorities that have no interest in either objective.

Scientific research has been accorded a high priority in cooperation between Israel and the EU. Israel is an active participant in Horizon 2020, an EU scheme aimed at encouraging innovation, which has been earmarked almost $100 billion over a seven-year period.

***
By trading with Israel’s illegal settlements and supporting companies that are involved in the settlement enterprise, as defined by the OHCHR, the EU is violating both obligations of non-recognition and non-assistance.

The EU maintains a web of military relations, weapons research, banking transactions and settlement trade with Israeli companies, banks and institutions that are deeply implicated in human rights violations.

According to a deep dive into Jared Kushner’s introduction into the family real estate business, former tenants who lived in the first apartments the teen Kushner purchased — with family money — recall living without heat and problems with raw sewage that no one saw fit to repair. The Boston Globe spoke with tenants who lived in apartment complexes in the city of Somerville, northwest of Boston, who remember when Kushner, then an undergraduate at Harvard began purchasing properties and converting them into condos.

Israel issued its first condemnation of the use of a military-grade nerve agent in the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in England, though failed to mention Russia by name in its statement.

"Israel views with gravity the event which took place in Great Britain and condemns it vigorously. We hope that the international community will cooperate in order to avoid such further events," the statement from the Foreign Ministry read.

Britain asked for an official condemnation, though Israel only issued its Russia-free statement after a delay.

John Bolton as National Security Adviser, with Nikki Haley in Bolton’s old job at the U.N. and fundamentalist Christian dominionist Mike Pompeo moving from CIA director to replace Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, means that the neocons — never happy with the prospects of a Trump administration – will, once again, be in the driver’s seat of American foreign policy after a nine-year hiatus. Bolton’s tenure at the U.N. was punctuated by his own undiplomatic outbursts, as well as those of his spokesman, Richard Grenell, Trump’s nominee to be US ambassador to Germany. Bolton strenuously pushed the neocon foreign policy line, as spelled out in the charter for the movement founded in 1997, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

Secretary Tillerson was far from an ideal choice, but his anointed successor at the State Department – Mike Pompeo – may ditch diplomacy all together and start a war!

We both attended West Point. That’s where the commonalities end. I’ve been a soldier opposed to (endless) war; he’ll be a statesman opposed to peace. That should give us cause for pause.

So who is Mike Pompeo? The short answer: a startlingly hawkish Tea Party Republican oilman with a penchant for combative rhetoric and a near hysterical hatred for Iran. But he’s smart – valedictorian of his West Point class and a graduate of Harvard – and that makes him even more dangerous. His primary qualification, though, is his loyalty and propensity for mind-melding with his boss, Donald Trump. For the last year, he often personally delivered Trump’s presidential daily briefing (PDB) at the White House each morning and they agree on just about everything; as Trump says of Pompeo: "we’re always on the same wavelength."

Webmaster's Commentary:

Under Pompeo's watch, we may well be looking at more wars, until we wind up in a war with Russia.

I would not be surprised at seeing an attempt at the reinstitution of the draft in this country, this time, coming for our young women as well as our young men.

Expectations are that the Senate War Powers vote on the Yemen War, SJ Res 54, will come up for debate and a vote next week. That may not happen if the Republican leadership gets its way, however, as many are opposed to the bill, and are trying to stall a vote.

Some leaders are arguing the issue is too “divisive,” and that the matter should be sent back to a committee for closer study. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), by contrast, endorsed the Pentagon’s argument, saying the US does so much military engagement around the world that it would be dangerous to think the War Powers Act could apply to all of it.

But of course the whole point of the War Powers Act is that it does apply to any commitment of US forces overseas. It’s just that in recent years, presidents have relied on catch-all authorizations with vague limits to join some wars, and other times simply assumed Congress wouldn’t mind, as they generally have not minded.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The reality of this situation is, having armed, and provided guidance and mid-air refueling to the Saudi military, the US government has colluded in Saudi war crimes in Yemen:

There is nothing "divisive" about this; it is as real a statement of fact as are all the other horrible facts about this sordid military campaign in Yemen, 3 years on, and with no resolution in sight:

Because Yemen cannot grow its own food, and it has to be imported, the Saudis, with US military assistance, have blockaded the ports, meaning that malnutrition is causing death, and a massive health crisis for the country.

In my world, the poisoning of a child in the womb with this atrocious weapon, is criminal and inhuman beyond belief. And what gets me, is that the man who ordered this campaign, is not at all an uneducated man; Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, is very bright, university educated, has a law degree, and wound up 2nd in his class.

But could his hatred of the Iranian Shiias, who are acting as advisors to the Houthi rebels, be so great as to compel him to order the death, by direct military assaults; starvation, and disease, of non-combatants, and Yemen's children?!?

Sadly, the short answer here is "Yes"; and as a Christian pacifist activist, I will have to continue to bear witness to these atrocities on this site as long as I have breath.

When you destroy the children of a country, you destroy that country's future.

History will not be kind to this man; I understand that he is known by many honorifics in Saudi Arabia, because he is Saudi royalty.

History, however, will remember him as the Butcher of Yemen.

Senator Corker, the US government has to stop this madness; as you are perfectly aware, according to our Constitution, only Congress can declare war. It has not done so in Yemen.

I don't know what your portfolio holds in terms of weapons stocks, but I do know approximately, your net worth: Google has scrubbed the articles on this, but there are always other places to go to find such facts:

And Senator Schatz, whose office I called last week, to encourage you to vote for this bill, you, sir, owe me a return phone call!
Or have your alleged constituents with a point of view on this war different from that of your own, become....expendable and irrelevant in the State of Hawaii?!?

One of the pleasurable surprises of the AIPAC conference early this month — the conclave of the leading Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — was how much bad press the organization got. It’s becoming almost fashionable to criticize the lobby group for its enforcement of lockstep political support for Israel in Washington, and for its Soviet-style policy on access by the press.

These criticism are finally showing up in the mainstream press. The press has been licensed by the damage done to another powerful lobby group, the National Rifle Association, by mere high school students. It senses the same on-the-path-to-pariah status may await AIPAC, more than a decade after Walt and Mearsheimer published their book The Israel Lobby.

Although Israel makes no cars of its own, the world's top auto-security companies are all Israeli. The country also receives roughly one-fifth of the world's global private investment in cyber security. As independent and state-sponsored hackers wreak havoc, Israel continues to revolutionize its military and lead the way in the field.

To start, the Israeli Defense Force recruits the best and brightest coders and hackers as teens, to funnel them into their elite cyber warfare units.

“Because going to the service is compulsory, you can look at the Israeli army as the largest HR organization in the world,” said Roni Zehavi, the CEO of CyberSpark, a government initiative that serves as an innovation incubator.

Grant Smith, the author of Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America, reveals the revenue of the Israeli lobby’s will reach $6.3 billion in 2020, with 17,000 employees and 414,000 volunteers! (Please re-read that statement.) The purpose of the lobby is to influence the US government to serve its foreign-policy objectives and fund its military.

[It is understandable that the Israel government would desire this outcome, but it is unfortunate that the Israel lobby seeks to label those who criticize this relationship as "Anti-Semitic”. That is like saying anyone who criticizes US foreign policy or monetary policy is anti-American.

There is no shortage of American pundits who love to denounce “PC” speech codes that restrict and punish the expression of certain ideas on college campuses. What these self-styled campus-free-speech crusaders typically — and quite tellingly — fail to mention is that the most potent such campaigns are often devoted to outlawing or otherwise punishing criticisms of Israel. The firing by the University of Illinois of Professor Steven Salatia for his “uncivil” denunciations of the Israeli war on Gaza — a termination that was privately condoned by Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin — is merely illustrative of this long–growing trend.

March 16 marks 15 years since Rachel Corrie was killed. She died putting her body between a bulldozer and a home she was trying to protect in Gaza. She has inspired so many and we salute her and those who carry on her legacy.

I am being sued for libel in the High Court in England by Campaign Against Antisemitsm’s chairman Gideon Falter. I have made the decision to fight this crucial battle for freedom of expression even though this fight poses a real risk of bankrupting me and my family.

I choose to fight their suit because I believe that the CAA and its chairman and its use of libel laws pose a danger to freedom of speech and the future of this country as an open society. Enough is enough!

Mr. Falter has sued me for comments I made on my own website.

My comments were made in the context of expressing my opinion about the situation where, last July, The British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) attested that there had been no increase in anti-Semitism in Britain, and Gideon Falter and the CAA refused to accept the CPS’s verdict. Falter and the CAA insisted that anti Semitism was on the rise. Sky news reported on the discrepancies between the findings of CPS and the CAA.

The Israeli authorities are exerting pressure on Facebook to comply with more of their demands.

Earlier this month, members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, discussed how to suppress content of which they disapproved on the social media website.

One objective was to get Facebook to ban pictures of Ahmad Nasser Jarrar, a Palestinian extrajudicially executed by the Israeli army in February. Human rights groups have concluded that the military sought to kill, rather than arrest, Jarrar, a suspect in the shooting death of an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank.

Uri Maklev, an Israeli lawmaker, claimed there is a “correlation between social networks and terror operations,” and that “Facebook is responsible for what is being done on its platform” and must do “everything to remove such content.”

According to Israel’s state attorney office, the Israeli government requests an average of 12,000 cases of content to be removed from Facebook each year.

AIPAC sought to rally progressives to its side at its annual policy conference in Washington last week.

Largely, it didn’t work.

The Israel lobby giant is simply on the wrong side of too many progressive concerns – and not just Palestinian rights, but free speech as well.

Legislation pushed last week by AIPAC has been criticized as a violation of the First Amendment.

The American Civil Liberties Union has acknowledged recent tweaks to the legislation that targets the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.

But the ACLU’s director Faiz Shakir and staff attorney Brian Hauss wrote US lawmakers on 6 March to tell them that the civil rights organization “continues to strongly urge you to oppose the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, S. 720.”

Full speech given by Clayton Swisher (director of investigative journalism for Al Jazeera) discussing the making of “The Lobby”, a four-part undercover investigative series exposing the Israeli Embassy’s covert influence campaign in the UK at the "Israel Lobby and American Policy" conference on March 24th, 2017 at the National Press Club.

Delivered to The Israel Lobby and American Policy 2018 conference March 2, 2018 at the National Press Club

The Israel Lobby and American Policy conference was solely sponsored by the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep). This is a rush transcript.

POLITICIANS AROUND THE country are seizing upon highly publicized episodes of conservatives faced with harassment and heckling on college campuses by responding with a wave of legislation supposedly aimed at preserving free speech rights for campus speakers. But that commitment, while draped in the mantle of a principled defense of the First Amendment, does not always extend to speakers who criticize Israel and its policies.

This renewed concern about free speech comes after a number of high-profile incidents in which students interrupted conservative speakers, and in a few cases, even used violence at protests. At a hearing on campus free speech in October, U.S. senators expressed bipartisan support for the First Amendment on college campuses, but lawmakers around the country are demanding free speech with one hand, and passing laws that punish boycotts of Israel with the other.

Red-faced and with his hair still wet, Hani Abu Amirah’s grandson sobbed as he shuffled over to where she sat, looking out on the Mediterranean Sea from Gaza’s Shati refugee camp.

The boy’s distress stemmed from his decision to go swimming a little earlier that morning, one that incurred his father’s wrath when he was yanked out of the water and beaten for disobeying orders to stay away from the sea. A year ago, that childlike act of enjoyment would have gone unnoticed but today 80 percent of Gaza’s Mediterranean Sea coastline is thought to be polluted and families who used to rely on it for livelihoods and leisure now fear its waters.

Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, has passed a law that allows Israeli police to withhold the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces until their families agree to preconditions on funeral arrangements.

The law, voted in by the Knesset last Wednesday, applies to Palestinian citizens of Israel and those living in East Jerusalem, but not to Palestinians in the rest of the West Bank, or the Gaza Strip, which are under Israeli military rule.

The legislation was passed despite an Israeli high court ruling last year which determined that police have no legal authority to withhold bodies, and that doing so is a violation of basic rights.

“The holding of bodies and preventing their immediate burial is a violation of both Israeli and international law,” the human rights group Adalah stated last week.

Video captured on Monday shows Israeli forces assaulting Palestinian medics in the central occupied West Bank city of al-Bireh as they were attempting to aid a Palestinian who had been shot during clashes in the area.

Israeli forces destroyed tombstones in a Palestinian cemetery in occupied East Jerusalem early Monday morning, according to local sources.

Husni al-Kilani, supervisor of the al-Mujahideen cemetery, told Ma’an that he received a call at 3 a.m. on Monday informing him that the lock on the main door of the cemetery had been broken, and that the cemetery had been raided.

According to al-Kilani, armed Israeli forces were deployed at the entrance of the cemetery, while what he claimed were officers dressed as civilians, raided the cemetery and destroyed several tombstones using a variety of hand tools.

Al-Kilani told Ma’an that the destroyed tombstones belonged to Muhammad al-Kaluti, Abdullah Abu Kharroub, Thaer Abu Ghazaleh, Bahaa Elayyan, Muhammad Abu Khalaf, Abed al-Muhsen Hassuneh and Muhammad Nimr, who were all killed by Israeli forces during a wave of violence across East Jerusalem and the West Bank that erupted in October 2015.

Israel is holding talks with Russia and other parties about the situation around a disputed gas field that has been put up for tender by Lebanon and is expected to be developed by an international consortium of energy companies, including Russia's Novatek, Israeli Ambassador to Moscow Gary Koren told Sputnik.

"I can only confirm that we hold talks with Russia and other parties, and we hope that they will be successful. The Russian side is fully aware of the details," the ambassador said when asked about the possible risks for Russian companies that plan to develop the gas field.

Muslims & Christians Revere Jesus and Mary; Jews hate them both. The recent attacks on the Nation of Islam and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan have focused attention on the larger issue of Christian-Jewish relations. In a major address at the Nation of Islam’s Saviours’ Day convention on February 25, 2018, Minister Farrakhan presented the harshly anti-Christian words of the Babylonian Talmud—a book revered and followed by today’s Jews, but little known among Christians. Not only is it the source of the most racist of religious teachings—the Curse of Ham—the Talmud says, among many other vile things, that for “leading Israel astray” Jesus is forever remaining seated in a cauldron of boiling excrement in hell. Farrakhan also revealed that the followers of this strange Jewish doctrine attacked a Christian monastery in Israel and painted “Jesus is a monkey” on the walls and further desecrated the church by burning the door.

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“The United States shares the United Kingdom’s assessment that Russia is responsible for the reckless nerve agent attack on the British citizen and his daughter,” the statement, issued in the wake of the UN Security Council meeting called by the UK over the issue, reads.

The statement then proceeds to allege that there is a "pattern of behavior in which Russia disregards the international rules-based order, undermines the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide, and attempts to subvert and discredit Western democratic institutions and processes."

>>>

(*EXCELLENT: The more "Hawkish" way to go , as to be expected , after 14 months)

As a former interrogator in Iraq working as a military contractor for the private security firm CACI, Eric Fair was stationed at the Abu Ghraib prison and in Fallujah in 2004. While in Fallujah, he witnessed a torture device known as the Palestinian chair. He writes in his new book, “Consequence: A Memoir,” that the chair was a way to immobilize prisoners in order to break them down both physically and mentally. He also wrote that the Israeli military taught them how to use the Palestinian chair during a joint training exercise.

Bolton is a staunch interventionist, which would appear at odds with the non-entanglement foreign policy espoused by Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. However, as Trump entered his second year in office, it was apparent that one branch of the neocons, the most hawkish element and one linked to the Christian fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party, had captured control of the foreign policy levers of the Trump White House. Bolton has called for the US to declare war on Iran and North Korea and he has advocated for a US troop deployment to Syria to combat the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.

As the White House prepares to hold a conference aimed at resolving the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians in the besieged enclave say the summit is an attempt at erasing the Palestinian cause and turning it into "an aid project".

Palestinian representatives, who declined the White House's invitation to attend, were absent at the conference happening on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

However, representatives from some 20 countries are among the attendees who will discuss Gaza's health challenges, its chronic contaminated water and electricity problem, as well as poverty and food security.

Countries and international bodies who attended the conference include Bahrain, Egypt, the European Union, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United Nations, Japan, Cyprus, Canada and Israel.

The United States was expected to unveil several proposals that tackle some of these issues.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I am sorry, but without any Palestinian representatives whatsoever, this conference is merely "sound and fury, signifying nothing",and is merely attempting to wallpaper over the horrific treatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli government.

But then, what can one expect of a wretchedly apartheid, self-declared theocracy with nuclear weapons, and its enablers, the US government now being the worst of the lot?!?

A majority of United Nations members support a just resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, but U.S. political cowardice and the influential Israel Lobby thwart it, says veteran UN correspondent Ian Williams

As Qatar faces pressure to suppress an Al Jazeera report on the Israel lobby, Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah discuss how the climate of censorship and fear around Russiagate has empowered those long attacking Palestinian rights

Israel has recently been intensifying air strikes and the arming of anti-government forces in Syria, some of which are close to Al Qaeda. Professor As'ad AbuKhalil explains how Israel's activity in Syria is part of a larger pattern of its overall foreign policy engagement around the world

The hand of Israel is not being ruled out as Hamas announces an inquiry into an explosion that targeted the convoy of the West Bank-based Palestinian prime minister during a visit to the Gaza Strip.

Tuesday's blast injured several security guards of Rami Hamdallah but left him unharmed during a visit to the Hamas-run territory to open a public-works facility there.

The explosion happened shortly after Hamdallah's convoy passed through the Israeli-controlled Erez checkpoint, known to Palestinians as Beit Hanoun, in northern Gaza, an Al Jazeera correspondent at the scene reported.

Sources told Al Jazeera that Hamdallah and Ismail Haniya, senior political leader of Hamas, spoke by phone later in the day and agreed that Israel was behind the explosion because it appeared to be the incident's main beneficiary.

Alan Dershowitz is calling for the government of Qatar to censor Al Jazeera’s suppressed film exposing the US Israel lobby.

In a letter on Monday he called for the channel to “reshoot and re-edit” the film before its release to add “pro-Israel commentators.”

Clayton Swisher, Al Jazeera’s head of investigations, revealed in an article for The Jewish Daily Forward on Friday that he ran into Dershowitz at a restaurant when the Harvard law professor and prominent propagandist for Israel was recently in the Qatari capital Doha.

Swisher offered Dershowitz a private screening of the film, which uses undercover footage shot by an Al Jazeera reporter who infiltrated powerful Israel lobby groups in Washington by posing as a pro-Israel activist.

“I have no problem with any of the secret filming,” Swisher says Dershowitz told him afterwards. “And I can even see this being broadcast on PBS” – the US public broadcaster.

As the White House prepares to hold a conference aimed at resolving the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Palestinians in the besieged enclave say the summit is an attempt at erasing the Palestinian cause and turning it into "an aid project".

Palestinian representatives, who declined the White House's invitation to attend, were absent at the conference happening on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

However, representatives from some 20 countries are among the attendees who will discuss Gaza's health challenges, its chronic contaminated water and electricity problem, as well as poverty and food security.

Countries and international bodies who attended the conference include Bahrain, Egypt, the European Union, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the United Nations, Japan, Cyprus, Canada and Israel.

Last Wednesday, Palestinians in Jerusalem were hit with yet another travesty. The Israeli parliament ratified a bill that allows the minister of interior to revoke the residency rights of any Palestinian who poses a threat to Israel, or, more specifically, is suspected of a "breach of loyalty" to Israel.

Palestinians in Jerusalem do not possess Israeli citizenship or Palestinian passports. They are in a perpetual limbo state with a mere permanent residency card and temporary Jordanian passports for travel purposes. Between the years of 1967 and 2016, Israel has revoked the status of more than 14,500 Palestinian Jerusalemites, despite them having lived there for generations, since before the establishment of the Israeli state.

The Israeli parliament has passed a law that allows the minister of interior to revoke the residency rights of any Palestinian in Jerusalem on grounds of a "breach of loyalty" to Israel.

The bill, ratified on Wednesday, will also apply in cases where residency status was obtained on the basis of false information, and in cases where "an individual committed a criminal act" in the view of the interior ministry.

Under the new measure, Israel's Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, leader of the ultra-Orthodox political party Shas, will be able to strip the residency documents of any Palestinian whom he deems a threat.

Who tried to assassinate the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Rami Hamdallah, and the head of the PA’s intelligence services, General Majid Faraj, immediately after they arrived in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning? Was this a failed attempt on their lives or just a threatening signal to the PA’s leadership?

The answers to these questions, in the first few hours after the incident, are still rather blurry, contradictory and rife with conspiracy theories that in any case had prevailed with respect to the relations between Fatah and Hamas.

Among the expansive field of 2016 Republican presidential candidates on display in the party’s first debates, Donald Trump may be the most closely connected to the Jewish people.

Trump is from New York, works in professions saturated with Jews and long has been a vocal supporter of Israel. His daughter and two grandchildren are Jewish, the executive vice president of his organization is Jewish – and Trump certainly has chutzpah.

An investigation into the use of software manufactured and sold to the Mexican government by the Israeli company NSO Group, has stalled following alleged interference by corrupt officials and a refusal to cooperate by the US.

Israeli unmanned innovations include the Guardium armored robot car; miniature pistol-wielding tanks; and the “Spot and Shoot” system of remote-controlled machine-gun turrets on the walls enclosing Gaza, which are operated with videogame-style joysticks by distant female soldiers.

Since replacing embattled former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Gen. H.R. McMaster has been a key fixture of the Trump White House, helping to guide the president’s neoconservative foreign policy – particularly in Afghanistan and Syria. Yet recent reports have suggested that McMaster’s days may be numbered, owing to differences of “personality” and “style” with the president and months of tensions said to have resulted from McMaster’s private criticisms of the president’s intelligence.

Israeli unmanned innovations include the Guardium armored robot car; miniature pistol-wielding tanks; and the “Spot and Shoot” system of remote-controlled machine-gun turrets on the walls enclosing Gaza, which are operated with videogame-style joysticks by distant female soldiers.

Putin’s March 1st presentation of new Russian weapons has been greatly misunderstood as a declaration of strategic parity or triumphalism. There was a much more urgent need, namely, to prevent an imminent strike. This danger is not over yet, for a week later, on March, 7, President Putin emphasised his readiness to employ the nuclear weapons for retaliation purposes, even if it would end the world.

The sharply raised stakes were a game-changer. Who knows what will be the Russian response on this or other action of the Western allies? The warlike neocons say Russia is all talk, all bluff. Realists say that the US may suffer the humiliating and painful loss of its CSGs with thousands of lives at sea. The US President had enjoyed the previous strike of Syria with dozens of Tomahawks before returning to his beautiful chocolate cake. If the strike were revisited upon the striking SCGs – this is totally different matter.

Trump will go down as the Man who destroyed America and maybe the Planet.

The firing of Secretary of State Tillerson, the movement of CIA Director Pompeo to Secretary of State, and the promotion of Gina Haspel, who oversaw the secret CIA torture prisons in Thailand (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/02/us/politics/cia-deputy-director-gin...), indicate that the military/security complex has closed its grip on the Trump regime. There will be no more talk of normalizing relations with Russia.

Such a war is likely to be ignited by the unrest destined to follow the U.S.’ imminent move of its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The move, set to take place in May, led Hamas to call for a third intifada, or uprising, in response to the U.S.’ unilateral decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in defiance of the international consensus.

Beyond the fact that Israel is preparing to go to war with several countries simultaneously is the fact that U.S. ground troops are now “prepared to die for the Jewish state,” according to U.S. Third Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Richard Clark.

“We are ready to commit to the defense of Israel and anytime we get involved in a kinetic fight there is always the risk that there will be casualties. But we accept that, as in every conflict we train for and enter, there is always that possibility,” Clark told the Post.

Webmaster's Commentary:

'U.S. ground troops are now “prepared to die for the Jewish state,” according to U.S. Third Air Force Commander Lt. Gen. Richard Clark.'

Oh, really, General Clark?!?

I would seriously doubt that.

I would respectfully suggest that you ask your troops if this is, in fact, the honest truth as they see it.

And I will venture one relatively safe bet here; the Israeli government wants to see these wars go forward; but primarily at the costs of American blood and American money.

" Sderot is built on the lands of a Palestinian Arab village called Najd, which was ethnically cleansed by Jewish terrorists in May 1948 before Israel was declared a state and before any Arab armies entered Palestine. The 600-plus villagers, all Muslim, were forced to flee for their lives. Britain, the mandated government, was on watch while this and many other atrocities were committed by rampaging Jewish militias." >>

"When I was a young Israeli I learned from our leading military leaders that Israel was not afraid of wars. They said: “We know how to deal with tanks, infantry, airplanes. Even ballistic missiles won’t knock us down.” But they added: 'If the Palestinians decide one day to march to Jerusalem we won’t be able to offer a military answer.'">>

The other uninspiring appointee that unfortunately made it through the vetting process is Gina Haspel, who was named as Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on February 2nd. She was reportedly involved in the rendition and torture programs ca. 2003-4 and actually was senior officer in charge of one of the overseas prisons located in Thailand, which was the epicenter of the “enhanced interrogation” program and the site where al-Qaeda prisoner Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times, “tortured so brutally that at one point he appeared to be dead.” In 2005 she also ordered the destruction of the video tapes made of the interrogations to avoid providing evidence to any congressional inquiry into what had gone on.

When I was a young Israeli I learned from our leading military leaders that Israel was not afraid of wars. They said “we know how to deal with tanks, infantry, airplanes. Even ballistic missiles won’t knock us down.” But they added, “if the Palestinians decide one day to march to Jerusalem we won’t be able to offer a military answer.”

Ynet reported today on two ‘Palestinians Return’ marches due to take place later this March and in May. The Israelis are in a state of panic and for good reason.

The following is a translation of the Ynet article:

"The Great March of Return": is an initiative in Gaza for a mass march toward the Israeli border.

Hundreds of Ultra-Orthodox Jews have blocked roads and clashed with police in Israel, protesting military drafts. Footage shows protesters being dragged away by law enforcement.

The latest violent encounter between the members of Ultra-Orthodox community and law enforcement happened in the center of Bnei Brak city, several kilometers east of Tel Aviv, on Monday evening, Israeli media reported. Demonstrators blocked the city’s main road and a nearby highway, leading to scuffles with police.

The White House will hold a conference on the humanitarian situation in Gaza on Tuesday, but it is unclear whether any Palestinian officials will attend.

President Donald Trump's "administration believes that deteriorating humanitarian conditions in Gaza require immediate attention," US special envoy Jason Greenblatt said in a statement announcing the conference.

The meeting is expected to include top White House aide Jared Kushner, National Security Council staff and "many of the relevant parties," according to Greenblatt.

It is unclear whether Palestinians officials will break their de facto boycott of US officials to attend.

The Palestinians were enraged by President Donald Trump's decision to break with long-standing US policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition is on the verge of breaking, as one party in the ranks has announced their intention to vote against a compromise bill regarding exempting Orthodox Jewish men from military service.

The leadership of Yisrael Beiteinu, a secular conservative party, announced that they would vote against the bill that was hashed out by their coalition partners of Likud (Netanyahu's party) and the religious United Torah Judaism (UTJ).

The bill in question is meant to grant a military exemption to Haredi (literally means "in awe of God," often called "ultra-Orthodox" in English but not without controversy) students attending a yeshiva (a traditional Jewish school for the study of the Torah and Talmud).

The single greatest feat of Israel and its overseas missions has not been material success, or the military conquest of millions of unarmed Palestinians, it has been ideological ? the widespread acceptance in the US of a doctrine that claims ?Jews are a superior people?.

Fawzi Abu Jarad is preparing to move and the 62-year-old former shepherd wants to bring his entire extended family of 28 people with him.

He won’t go far, however. A resident of Gaza, he can’t go far. But he will go deeper inside the Gaza Strip in search of some safety, however illusory. Anywhere is safer than home for the Abu Jarads.

Home is the Bedouin village of Um al-Nasser. Located in the far north and almost flush against the boundary with Israel, it is not only an impoverished, isolated and underdeveloped part of Gaza. It is also directly in the line of any invading Israeli army, should another offensive start.

Um al-Nasser’s villagers have been there before. On 17 July 2014, just around sunset, the Abu Jarads and other families found themselves trapped in the village when it became one of the initial targets of the Israeli army’s ground invasion at the outset of that phase of Israel’s 51-day assault on Gaza.

A Washington state court on Friday moved to end a lengthy legal campaign against former board members of the Olympia Food Co-op over their decision to support a boycott of Israeli goods.

“It’s a huge victory that’s been a long time coming,” said Maria LaHood, deputy legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is part of the legal team representing the defendants.

In 2010 the co-op became the first grocery store in the US to boycott Israeli goods as part of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign for Palestinian rights.

A state court dismissed the lawsuit filed in 2011 by five former members of the board working closely with the Israel advocacy group StandWithUs. The plaintiffs sought to block the co-op’s boycott and secure monetary damages against board members who voted in favor of the measure.

On a tour of the Muslim holy site, the Haram-al-Sharif, in the Old City of Jerusalem yesterday, a Colorado congressman’s wife advised messianic Jews that “seizure” of the site might be the best option. “Why not tomorrow– say it’s ours!” she said to zealots on the site.

Jean Tipton was touring the site along with her husband Scott Tipton, a Republican representing western Colorado, and Rep. David McKinley of West Virginia and his wife Mary.

The Haram-al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary is the third holiest site in Islam. It is governed by a Muslim waqf, backed by Jordan. The site in the occupied Old City of Jerusalem is also revered by Jews because it is the site of the first and second Jewish temples. Its western wall is the famous scene of Jewish prayer.

Jewish Temple Mount activists dream of asserting Israeli sovereignty over the mount, removing the Muslim structures, and replacing them with a Jewish temple, with millions of Jews attending sacrifices there.

New York Times columnists Bret Stephens and Roger Cohen repeatedly bashed the left for not tolerating dissent at a panel about Israel in New York last week. Cohen called for “unsafe” speech and “open discussions, fierce debate” so as to fend off a “monolithic” McCarthyist “mob” on campuses.

But the panel itself embodied Jewish intolerance of dissent: All three speakers on stage at the Jewish Community Center of Manhattan were ardent Zionists, introduced by a JCC official, Dava Schub, as people who could “articulate our connection to and our commitment to Israel. . . the great Jewish project which should unite us but somehow divides us.”

The panel included one Israel critic, Roger Cohen, to counter two rightwing Zionists, Stephens and the event’s moderator, New York Times editor Bari Weiss.

Faced with weekly protests, Israel goes through a lot of tear gas. Officials seem to be looking to modernize these tear gas attacks, however, with a video showing the use of an Israeli drone to drop canisters of gas directly on the crowd of demonstrators.

The video showed an area in the southern Gaza Strip, near the Israeli border, where Palestinians were gathered. Israel sent the drone into Gaza airspace to drop canisters on the crowd, sending them scattering.

This is the first such use of a drone by Israel. The Israeli military denied having anything to do with the incident, claiming that the border police were the ones who operated the drone.The border police denied all comment.

An Israeli military spokesman did, however, issue a statement defended the crackdown on protests within Gaza, saying they were too close to the border fence, and claiming that the protests are used as “cover” for terrorist attacks.

Less than two weeks before the Israeli energy giant Delek Drilling announced a $15 billion deal to pump natural gas to Egypt, one of its board members, Malcolm Hoenlein, told a newspaper that the United States should be “standing up for” Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, despite his troubling human rights record.

“You can criticize and you can push for human rights and do all those things,” Hoenlein said. “At the same time you’ve got to recognize the realities that these countries face.”

Hoenlein did not speak to the newspaper as a Delek Drilling board member. Instead, he spoke in his more familiar role: as the prominent leader of one of the American Jewish community’s most powerful foreign and domestic policy advocacy groups. As the head of the not-for-profit Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Hoenlein has represented American Jews in meetings with the top levels of Israeli, Arab and U.S. political leadership for decades.

Last week, students at the University of Virginia protested during a campus event featuring a group of Israeli soldiers.

The soldiers were part of Reservists on Duty, an organization that aims to counter the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights on US college campuses.

They were brought to campus by Israel-aligned groups in order to “humanize the conflict” – in other words, to distract from Israel’s human rights abuses and help brand the Israeli military as “the most moral army in the world.”

Protesters held signs and chanted slogans including, “Fight the power, turn the tide, end Israeli apartheid.”

Following their action in solidarity with Palestinians living under Israeli military rule, the University of Virginia’s dean of students Allen Groves accused the protesters of violating univerisity rules and hampering free speech.